"Let the work of government begin."

Did Gordon Brown watch Saturday's Who? If not, his choice of soundbite this morning - "Let the work of change begin" - seems a little... uncanny. Still, in he goes, and out goes Anthony "Tony" "Yo" Blair, and not before time. Don't you think he looks old? I tell you, it's the third term that does it. It's always the third term that pushes them over the edge - even Thatcher somehow managed to become more mad after her third election. It's just not healthy for Prime Ministers to cling onto power that long. But anyway.

The Sound of Drums - oooooh, 9 out of 10. But in a tennish kind of way. I think it's the most promising of the three series finales to date - it has the present-day setting that gave Army of Ghosts an urgency and a solidity Bad Wolf didn't have, but without the pile-it-on sensationalism of Cybermen vs Daleks. Plus you've got the political material of Aliens of London without the farting aliens - bonus! The one thing it needs to push it up to a 10 is a really first-rate second half, and I'm quite hopeful.

Top marks to John Simm, the playful Master. He's every bit as much fun to watch as Delgado and Ainley, but I think his is also a more convincing portrayal of sheer universe-destroying insanity than the urbane evil of his predecessors. And hallelujah, no cod "evil" dialogue. (When I think of the prime Captain Bird's-Eye Anthony Ainley used to have to deliver... or even Sir Derek J last week...) The Cabinet gassing scene was good, but second best to Simm opening and closing the door on that screaming journalist. It's funny and evil.

A few random thoughts:

I'm not sure about the Master's taste in music, partly because I didn't recognise it, but mostly because it just seemed odd for him to play a pop song at that moment. (Then again, he did listen to King Crimson in The Mind of Evil.) I'm not familiar with the work of Malcolm "Mac" Fly, but I assume this was something Mr Fly knocked out while he was filming his cameo appearance.

So there are about six billion Toclafane, "every man, woman and child" is involved in their plan for world conquest, it would break the Doctor's hearts to know what they actually are and there's a paradox engine involved. I think I see roughly where this is going. (Actually, the current global population is around 6.6-and-a-bit billion, but if you decimate that figure...)

Shame that, after doing such a splendid job of aging David Tennant in The Family of Blood, the Who crew should give him the puffy, jowly Lazarus look this time. Did they not keep the prosthetics at all?

Yes, I think we all spotted the Captain Scarlet Cloudbase. Destiny Angel, Harmony Angel, Archangel. Well, it fits. And we've talked about Indestructible Captain Harkness before.

So now we know why the Master is the way he is - as a boy he gazed into the Who title sequence, and the theme tune drove him mad. He's just pissed off that he doesn't have his own TV show, that's what it is. (He's certainly doing his best to steal this show, bless him.)

"This new regeneration of yours - kind of cheeky."

Well, everybody's up and pointed out that the monsters in this week's Who were lifted straight out of Mad Max, even the director, so why not just say it again? But so what if the story was thin and rudimentary, so what if the minor characters were disposable? Utopia wasn't about telling a story, it was about setting up the next two episodes and the big finale. And it did this to the tune of... probably 6 or 7 out of 10. Gridlockish in its preference of grand myth-building set pieces and quirky character/dialogue moments over sustained narrative content.

Some of that myth-building didn't work so well, and I'm thinking specifically here of the "You are not alone"/Yana thing. Two faults: it made no sense within the context of the story (could've just left it as a wink and a nod to the fans at home and gotten away with it), and it was hammered home with gross unsubtlety. Then I pick up today's Radio Times and find them proving that "Mister Saxon" actually is "Master no. six", although you have to fudge it a bit (and typically, poor old Gordon Tipple who appeared in shadow in the TV Movie pre-credits doesn't get a look in). What galls isn't that online fan theories are being proven right - it's that it's the really cheesy theories that are being proven right.

Let's move right along to the Master himself. I have a beef with the Master, and it's basically the same as my beef with the Daleks. "We need a villain for this story." "Oh, let's wheel out the Master again, he hasn't had his yearly dusting-off yet. And besides, 'everybody knows he's the Doctor's greatest enemy', chiz chiz." (Edit #1: And let me just make clear, I'm talking Old Who here. Old Who worked that whole nemesis schtick into the ground. New Who is allowed to try it once, and we'll see how it goes. I can only applaud RTD's restraint in waiting three years to do it.)

The Master was a corny rent-a-villain even in the first year he showed up, when they shoe-horned him into every single Who story of 1971, and yet there was actually a point to him back then. As anyone who's read a Who reference work will know, the Buddhism-loving producer brought in this destructive personification of the Doctor's id in order to set up a finger-cymbal-tinging revelatory showdown in Jon Pertwee's final story, a plan that fell through when Roger Delgado sadly died between seasons. And so the Master just disappeared for a while, a loose end for later producers to bring back whenever they were short of a cliched cackling megalomaniac with no credible motive to drive that week's story.

Not that I don't enjoy Delgado's suavity or Ainley's hammy purring now and then, you understand. Sometimes I even enjoy Dalek stories. But it's just too easy, with any recurring villain, to hang a story solely off their reappearance rather than tell a good story that happens to have them in it, and that way mediocrity lies. It's a little worrying, therefore, to watch an episode of New Who that's pretty much hung off the reintroduction of the Master. Now I'm prepared to keep an open mind for the next two weeks because there's every reason to suppose that Russell T Davies will find something interesting and new to do with the Master the first time he uses him (it's the second and subsequent times I'd worry about), because it's the season finale and I have faith in RTD to pull it out of the bag, and because John Simm shows promise in the role.

Positive things now. Derek Jacobi was wonderful as lovely old Professor Yana. Thing is, I do largely associate him with roles of the "lovely old" variety (Claudius, Brother Cadfael), so I was a bit unsure of him as the Master. He handled the transition between the two very well, though. His humanoid weevil assistant was good too - I'm prepared to let the "Chan, tho" stuff go on the basis that it's a cultural etiquette thing. John Simm certainly looks like he'll have fun with the part over the next couple of episodes. Quick fannish moment - it's been said that the Doctor's regenerations can be affected by whatever's around him beforehand. (Edit #2: I was pretty sure this was said explicitly in the new series, possibly in the Children in Need skit or else in New Earth. But I don't have a copy of New Earth owing to it being not very good, and I haven't yet had time to check the skit on Youtube (Bonus Edit: Now I have, and it isn't there, dammit.), so I don't absolutely definitely know. If it wasn't said outright in the series, it should've been, 'cos it's a great fan theory that's been doing the rounds for some considerable time.) So Doctor Tennant is more like his Cockernee companion than Doctor Eccles. Does it also explain the Fourth Doctor's alien, skittish mind that the Third Doctor spent his final hour in a room with a giant megalomaniac spider? So here we see the Master regenerate inside the Doctor's TARDIS, and blow me if he isn't acting a lot more Doctorish.

All things considered, I wouldn't call this one of the great episodes in its own right, but it makes the two-part finale look highly appetising. Excellent ending.

Let's exchange the experience

The weekend was spent back in London again, this time in the company of The Lovely Jo. There we made our own wedding rings - yes, made them from scratch with our own hands. Well, made them from 18-carat gold with tiny blowtorches, mills, pliers, files and assorted buffing materials. Photos will eventually exist and may be added to the Book of Faces.

This, we feel, was more interesting and more personal than simply picking them out of a shop window, plus it meant we got to shape Jo's ring to the contours of the engagement ring. Although to be honest, our instructor did all the hard work there. So hearty thanks to Tom, who looks uncannily like Richard E Grant and will be played by him when the revolution is televised, or summat.

Hearty thanks also to Jo's uncle Simon, who was our extremely generous host for the weekend, and who celebrated Jo's birthday with us by taking us out for a show and a meal. The show in question proved to be Avenue Q, the filthy musical stage parody of Sesame Street. All good, um... dirty, um... non-family fun. The Bad Idea Bears, it has to be said, are the most adorable avatars of evil ever. "More drinks - more fun! Yaaaaay!"

Next weekend, in a shocking departure from the recent trend: no London!

"This is my timey-wimey detector. Goes 'ding' when there's stuff."

"Night of the Street Mimes"! I see what you're doing here, Mr Moffat - not making children scared of statues after all, but making them scared of those people who paint themselves silver and stand around on boxes not moving. An entirely noble and laudable cause.

For this episode, another tennish 9 or ninish 10 I think. Fantastic concepts and fantastic execution - I particularly like the fact that the Angels being "quantum locked" by anyone observing them includes us, the viewers (and themselves, of course - they must have a hell of a time with reflective surfaces). Lovely characters as well, and some nice quiet woodwind music here and there. Still, I give Human Nature the edge, and that's due in no small part to the closing montage at the end of Blink.

I mean, is there really any point in effectively leaning out of the TV and saying, "Hey kids! There were scary statues in tonight's story, and there might be some statues near where you live! Wooooo!" The programme and the kids themselves do that anyway! That's what the playground is for! Did Spearhead From Space end with sinister music over a montage of high-street clothes stores? Did The Armageddon Factor end with Tom Baker punching Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev in the chops? Did The Two Doctors end with Colin Baker holding a steak in front of the camera and saying, "Meat - bad! Meat - bad!" One suspects the episode underran by a couple of minutes... But that aside, an excellent episode and so far an excellent second half-season. Doctor Who really should aspire to be this good every week.

Further bloggings on the weekend's activities to follow.

"I suspect alcohol has played its part in this."

Oh, where do you begin? Let's begin at the end. The Doctor can't give John Smith back to Joan. He can't make amends by taking her away as his companion; he can't even understand, until he's told, why it's wrong of him to offer. What he can do is take horrific, mythic and highly apt revenge against the Family on her behalf and his. Looks like the Doctor's taken it all a bit more to heart than he might let on.

That's just got to be 10 out of 10. And the great thing about Human Nature/Family of Blood is that it tells us everything we need to know about the Doctor by showing us everything he's not (and everything he can't have, of course). As with last week, the adaptation from book to TV show is predominantly in the TV show's favour, especially with the fantastic flash-forwards scene. Interesting to see aspects of the novel's ending stuck onto the end of the episode - I kind of felt that it had already ended when the TARDIS vanished, and that perhaps there was one ending too many in there, but still nice to see it. It's still more beautiful in the novel, but then the rest of the story is that bit more beautiful in the episode.

The only way that could have been better is if Old John Smith on his deathbed had croaked out "Rosebud". I jest, of course.

Heat in the jungle street

Back from a weekend visit to London, there to participate in the stag do of an old Exeter housemate. The best man has posted some photos of the event via Facebook.

Now, London is a city I love not. I don't dislike it, you understand, not in the way I dislike, say, Moscow: it's not a featureless, grey, concrete hell. But there's just too much of it. Many people would find this a wonderful thing - always more to see, always something new around the corner - and I can appreciate that, but on that scale I find it daunting. Vertiginous. I like to be able to pin a city down and understand it. Exeter was great for that - one main central street and a university campus, but you can still claim you live in a city because it has a cathedral. Bristol's probably as much city as I can handle - it's quite big, but it's manageable. London - too big.

Plus there are just too many people. Plus it's always city-hot and humid - all that industry concentrating all that heat in one place, and all those big, showy buildings holding it all in. And then there's the quality of the air - I always find when I visit London that at the end of the day I'm blowing soot into my handkerchief, and I'll usually spend the next day coughing the London back out of my lungs. But mainly it's the size of the place. Not that there aren't nice things to see and do. There are many nice things to see and do. I'm just glad not to live there.

But enough of this, what of the stag do? It can only be described as jolly mayhem. The best man and I nodding as the heavily accented Eastern European desk woman at the Earls Court YHA explained the house rules to us, then realising when we got to the top of the stairs and dropped our overnight bags that we hadn't taken in a word because I'd assumed he understood what she was saying, and he'd assumed I understood what she was saying, and we'd both just been nodding along out of politeness. The bawdiness at the restaurant, and the catchphrases for the evening evolving out of it in the way that they so often do. Each successive pub or bar closing on the hour, forcing us to roam the streets in search of another one that wouldn't charge us to get in, and each time being rudely ushered out by the crème de la sour crème of London's bar staff. Finding ourselves in a café at 2am, the passersby leering in at us. The incredibly slow voice of the night porter at the YHA who told the best man that he was "welcome here" (although sadly he didn't follow this up with "Enter, dungeoneer"). And Sunday morning, unwinding in Covent Garden, and one by one wandering off in search of our respective trains home.

To cap a fine weekend, "King Stag" and I whiled away the time waiting for our trains by strolling up and down Paddington, and outside a corner café we were treated to the peculiar sight of a large standard pipe resting unattended next to one of the tables. So I can say in all sincerity that I've seen a hookah standing on a street corner in London on a Sunday afternoon. Although I didn't stop for a quick suck.